The professional movie making industry has long been seeking to record audio and high definition video in digital format in the field and then transfer the recorded digital format audio and high definition video to production and post-productions systems. One long-sought goal of the professional movie making industry has been to record the digital audio and high definition video in what is commonly referred to as “analog” format—without compressing the digital audio and video. Compressing audio or video when recorded in the field not only results in loss of digital information that may be required to preserve the highest quality digital recording possible but also renders subsequent editing and production more difficult or even impossible with any acceptable degree of quality in the resulting audio and video product.
One digital audio and video recording solution used in the industry utilizes one or more large trucks loaded with racks of computing systems and digital storage disk arrays. The user must drive the truck to the location of a video shoot, connect a digital camera and microphones to the truck-based system in the field, record and store digital audio and video on the truck-based system, move the truck-based system around in the field as required to record the desired audio and video, drive the truck-based system back to the production studio when recording is concluded, connect the truck-based system to a network at the production studio, and then transfer the recorded audio and video over the network connection for use of the recorded audio and video in production and post-production systems. This common prior art system is expensive, awkward, labor intensive, and inefficient.
One prior art system requires at least two large and heavy boxes of equipment. One box contains computing equipment for use in the field, and the second box contains disk drives. The two boxes are typically mounted and truck transported to the field location for a video shoot, and interconnected by input/output cables in the field in order to record and store digital audio and video in the field. This box-based system is quite heavy, usually truck-based, difficult to transport from location to location, expensive, and awkward.
One solution has provided digital audio and video storage disk drives connected to a conventional, bulky computing system by low insertion force (LIF) connectors. A user can thereby record and store compressed digital audio and video on the drives, remove the drives, transport the drives, and re-connect the drives to the same or another conventional computing system. These systems have been largely used only in connection with compressed digital audio and video and the large size makes them impractical for field use.
Although the laptop computing systems have long utilized LIF connectors to connect with laptop docking stations, laptop-based systems are limited in their capabilities. They are not capable of providing the power, storage capacity, and feature set required to accomplish professional field recording of digital audio and video.